Items for sale -- crayon rolls

Every child needs some crayons and a coloring book, right? Definitely a great take-along to help occupy a kid. I've toted crayons in everything from the original box to a ziploc baggie, none of which are terribly convenient. Figuring others might feel the same,  I made up some crayon rolls for the craft bazaar.

I love the fabrics I found -- they feature crayons, scribbles, crayon drawings and fun bright dots. Each roll holds 12 crayons, and then rolls up and ties shut to tuck in anywhere to carry along.



Items for sale -- texture lovies

In preparation for the craft bazaar, I tried to figure out what would sell well or be in demand. I figured there would likely be people looking for Christmas gifts for baby or even upcoming baby showers. One of my little ones' favorite baby item was a Taggie blanket. The concept is simple: a small blanket with ribbon loops around the edges to provide different textures for baby to play with. The name, however was a little more difficult. Since Taggie is already a brand name, I had to come up with something different...and texture lovie it was! My lovies were 12" squares, with varying fabrics for the body of the blanket. I tried to vary color and texture of the ribbons around the outside as much as possible, to provide the most opportunity for baby's stimulation.

As I began making the lovies, I started with 2 layers of fleece. And quickly decided that it would be both easier for me and a more interesting finished product if I used flannel prints for one side of the blanket. So I found some remnants and got some cute fabrics to make the blankets from. And made a bunch!

After a pile of those, I found some really cute patchwork fabrics, and had the thought to do some lovies out of "premium" fabrics. I bought the patchwork and some minky - super soft with raised dots, and used those as one side of some more blankets.

And speaking of items for sale -- Now that the craft fair and Christmas are over, I'm starting up a Facebook page where I will be listing all of my leftovers from the bazaar (and there are plenty! Traffic was a little slow) and taking custom orders! The page can be found by searching "Casually Crafty" in your Facebook search bar. It's bare-bones right now, but I hope to have it up and running soon!



More felting

As mentioned in my 'about me' section, my daughter is special needs. This encompasses a lot of things, one of which is a speech delay. As an effort to help her communicate with us, we purchased an ipad2 so she could use it as a choice making device/communication device. She has been working hard with it and is making steady progress. However, we are pretty hard on it in carrying it with us back and forth to therapy and all over, so I felt a cover would be a great idea. I found a pattern for a felted ipad case, and decided she needed one!



I can knit!

I've referenced my knitted bowl several times...it's about time I post about it! Over a year ago, I tried to learn to knit by working on a dishcloth on some super long straight needles. It took a lot to get the needles to cooperate with me, and the knit stitches were taking forever on this dishcloth. Finally I gave up and went back to crocheting everything.
I still wanted to learn to knit, especially socks. Crocheted socks just aren't the same. I also really want to do cable knitting, though I have been really impressed lately with some of the crocheted cables I've done. Since socks are knitted in the round on either DPNs (double pointed needles) or circular needles, I figured I'd better learn how to operate those. I also wanted to make some trinket bowls for my sewing space -- I have a lot of things that don't have a home or I need close by and not dig through a lot of stuff to get to them. So....I decided to knit a bowl out of 100% wool, so I could felt it.
DPNs took a little bit of getting used to, and my bowl suffered a 2 year old induced "fall" off the needles, after which it needed to be started over. After the 2nd start, though, it went very well.

in progress

Once I finished the bowl, it took me forever to get it felted, but it's finally done!